Chapter 17 #2
She stops walking.
Her head snaps toward me, eyes wide with a fresh wave of revulsion. “You… you’re stalking me?”
The word hangs there, ugly and accurate.
“I’m watching the route,” I correct, though it sounds thin even to my own ears.
“That’s the same thing!” She takes a step away from me, looking at me with a mix of horror and confusion. “You were sitting in the dark waiting for me?”
“Yes.”
She stares at me, her chest heaving. I can see the calculation running behind her eyes—Declan the protector versus Declan the predator.
The fact that my stalking just saved her from a real threat is clearly short-circuiting her anger, and she hates it.
She hates that the thing she should be afraid of is the thing that just made her safe.
“Why?” she demands, voice shaking.
“Because he grabbed you,” I say.
“He grabbed me tonight,” she counters. “You were already here.”
She’s too smart.
My jaw flexes. “I’m here because of Thursday.”
Her expression falters. “Thursday?”
“The gala,” I say, the words scraping out.
“Because I sat in my truck and watched you walk away alone into the dark, and I didn’t follow you.
Because I let you leave thinking you weren't worth chasing.” I look at her, forcing myself not to look away.
“I haven't slept since. I needed to know you made it from one building to another without disappearing, because I failed at it two nights ago.”
Anger flares in her eyes now, sparking under the fear. “That’s not your job. And guilt isn’t a license to track me.”
“Don’t care,” I say. “I’m making it mine.”
She lets out a sharp, humorless sound. “You’re not my bodyguard, Declan.”
“I’m not trying to be your—”
“Then what are you?” she snaps. There’s color in her cheeks now, high and hot. “Because from where I’m standing, it feels like you’re either on my side or you’re not, and I can’t tell which one you’re choosing.”
I stop walking.
She takes two more steps before she realizes I’m not beside her and turns back, arms wrapped tight around herself, breath puffing in the cold.
Her eyes are bright. Not with tears. Not yet. With fury.
“You kissed me,” she says. The words land between us like a dropped blade. “You kissed me, Declan. In the dark. In the rink. You walked me to my door and kissed me like you meant it.”
My chest tightens. “I did.”
“Yeah?” Her laugh is brittle. “Funny. Because then I watched you stand there in a room full of cameras and let someone else kiss you like you belonged to her.”
I feel that one all the way down to the tape on my hands.
“It’s not like—”
“Don’t,” she cuts in. “Don’t say it’s not like that. I saw it. I saw her hand on your face. I saw you not move. I saw your father look at you like you’d done your trick properly.”
I flinch at that more than I did at the country club.
“It’s complicated,” I say, hating how weak it sounds.
She stares at me like she can’t believe I chose that word.
“Do you know what you looked like?” she asks, voice going softer, more dangerous.
“You looked… tame. Like a pet. And I’m supposed to trust the guy who stands still while someone else puts a leash on him, but then hides in the dark and follows me home? ”
“I didn’t follow you from there,” I say. “I saw you in the lot, yeah. I should’ve come over. I didn’t. I’ve been trying to make up for that every night since.”
“By watching me from the bushes?” she asks. “That’s your grand plan?”
I take a step toward her before I can stop myself. She doesn’t back up, but her shoulders go stiff again, and I halt.
“Talia,” I say, low. “If I hadn’t been here tonight, he would’ve—”
“I know what he would’ve done,” she snaps. “You think I don’t know? You think that’s new to me?” Her hand cuts the air, furious. “My whole life is built around avoiding guys like that. Rerouting, pretending, calculating so I don’t have to depend on anyone else to step in, because no one ever does.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
No one ever does.
The anger drains out of me, replaced by a cold, sick feeling in my gut. This isn’t just about a drunk frat guy on a Saturday night. This is old. This is a wound that never healed.
I look at her—really look at her—and realize that the exit checks, the flinching, the way she scans every room isn’t anxiety. It’s memory.
“And then you show up,” she says. “You and your quiet and your stupid big hands and the way you stand between people and the door.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away.
“For five seconds, I thought… I don’t know.
That maybe I could breathe around you. That maybe if you said you were there, you’d be there. ”
“I was,” I say. The words scrape out. “At the rink. In the truck. Tonight.”
“In the dark,” she corrects. “Always in the dark. You sit with me in a coffee shop when it’s safe. You walk with me when it’s just the team. But the second she’s there? The second it costs you something? I’m a ghost.”
“That’s not—”
“Pick a lane, Declan,” she says, voice low and fierce. “Either I’m someone you want in the dark and the light, or I’m not. You don’t get to have it both ways. I won’t be the thing you hide in the corner while you play the good son for the cameras.”
Her chin trembles, but she holds it high.
“I won't be your dirty secret,” she whispers. “And I won't be another cage you walk into.”
That word again. Cage. It hits like a slap.
“It’s an arrangement,” I grind out. “She’s— It’s money. Contracts. My father. It’s a cage I walked into before I ever met you.”
Her expression twists. “Do you hear yourself? You’re standing here telling me you’re in a cage like that makes it better. Like that makes me less of a secret.”
“You’re not a secret,” I say. The truth of it feels like blood in my mouth. “You’re—”
“What?” she throws back. “What am I?”
The answer is right there, hot and terrifying and too big for this freezing strip of campus. I swallow it down before I wreck us both.
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” I say instead. “That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters here.”
“No,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “You’re trying to keep me safe.”
“Those are the same thing.”
“They’re not.” Her voice cracks now, just a little. “I am trying to live. There’s a difference. I can’t do that if you only want me in secret. I can’t keep… bargaining with myself that your dark is better than other people’s light.”
Her words hit places that have never had language before.
The dorm looms behind her now, lit up like a sterile beacon. Lobby bright. Hallways bright. The kind of light that doesn’t make anyone safer, just exposes all the cracks.
“I shouldn’t have watched you walk away at the country club,” I say. “I know that. I know I should’ve come after you. I fucked it up. I know.”
She looks tired suddenly. Bone-deep. “You did,” she says. No cushioning. No forgiveness.
The wind knifes between us. She pulls her coat tighter.
“And you showing up like this?” she adds. “Hiding in broken streetlights to make sure I don’t get grabbed?” She lifts her chin. “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
Silence settles heavy over the path.
“Do you want me to stop?” I ask.
The question shocks both of us.
If she says yes, I’m supposed to listen. I know that. I know where the line is supposed to be.
She looks at me for a long time. Then she huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh and turns toward the dorm.
“I want you to stop pretending this is normal,” she says over her shoulder. “You want to know I got in? Fine. You already made me start texting you. I’ll keep doing it so you don’t have to lurk in the dark like some horror movie extra.”
The words are barbed, but she’s still walking next to me. Not away.
We climb the steps to the entrance together. The fluorescent light spilling out of the lobby washes her face pale, picks out the shadows under her eyes. She swipes her student ID, the lock giving a loud, mechanical beep.
She stops with her hand on the door and looks back at me one more time.
“This doesn’t mean I’m okay with any of it,” she says. “The stalking. The country club. Her. You.”
I nod once. “I know.”
“It just means…” She swallows, eyes closing for half a second. When she opens them again, they’re steady. “It means I’d rather you know I made it inside than have you sitting out here building nightmares in your head.”
Fair.
“I’ll text,” she says. “Happy?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But I’m… less likely to lose my mind.”
That earns me the ghost of something around her mouth that might once have been a smile. It doesn’t quite make it.
“Good night, Declan,” she says.
“Night, Talia.”
She pulls the door open and slips inside. It closes with a soft thud, glass and metal and a line I’m not invited to cross.
I stay where I am.
Through the pane, I watch her cross the lobby, hit the elevator button, shift from foot to foot while she waits. She doesn’t look back.
My phone feels heavy in my palm when I pull it out.
My thumb hovers over our thread for a second. Then I type it anyway.
Me: You in?
I watch the elevator doors close on her. A slice of her blue coat. A flash of hair. Gone.
The hallway light on her floor glows through the narrow stairwell window. I stand there in the cold until it clicks off.
My phone buzzes.
Talia: In.
Same word. New weight. It settles under my ribs like a too-small bandage over a wound that’s still bleeding.
I pocket the phone and lean back against the stone wall of her dorm, letting the cold seep through my jacket. The adrenaline that carried me through the path and the argument drains out, leaving my legs shaky and my hands twitching.
My knuckles ache. Not from hitting anything. From not hitting anything.
From holding all of it back.
I flex my fingers, tape creaking. There’s no blood. No split skin. Just the memory of how easy it would have been to slam that guy harder, to feel bone give under my hand, to let the rage that lives under my sternum finally have something to break.
I don’t regret stepping in. I don’t regret scaring him.
I regret how good it felt.
How the world snapped into focus the second there was something to protect her from. How the noise in my head went instantly quiet the moment I had an enemy in front of me and her breathing behind me.
She thinks I’m steady. She thinks I’m the quiet one. The safe one.
Tonight she saw past that. Saw the part of me that parks in shadows and watches her walk, the part that keeps tabs instead of boundaries, the part that still belongs to a system that kisses me in public and calls it support.
She called me out and she’s right. I am crossing lines. I know where they are. I step over them anyway.
I close my eyes and rest the back of my head against the stone.
I’m a loaded gun, and she’s the only reason I’m pointing at anything that deserves it.
The worst part is knowing she’s starting to realize it, too. And that I still don’t know how to put the safety back on.